


losing game

by lovefool



Category: Open Heart (Visual Novels)
Genre: Angst, F/M, Friends With Benefits, Unrequited Love
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-08
Updated: 2020-12-08
Packaged: 2021-03-10 06:15:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,529
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27949679
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lovefool/pseuds/lovefool
Summary: For a one time fling, Bryce has been seeing you a lot.It usually starts like this. You both end a twelve hour shift exhausted. He mentions going to get a quick bite to eat, and you always accept. One thing leads to another, and you’re back in his bed, under his body, in his embrace.“We can’t keep doing this, Bryce,” you tell him for the nth time.“We can’t,” he agrees, but he tucks that promise away, somewhere out of reach, so that one day he can break it.
Relationships: Bryce Lahela/Main Character (Open Heart), Ethan Ramsey/Main Character (Open Heart)
Comments: 5
Kudos: 19





	losing game

There’s no feelings during the first time. 

As Bryce roughly fucks you into his bed, with his eyes squeezed shut and his mouth swearing profanities so loudly that even the autoplayed episode of _Gilmore Girls_ couldn’t drown him out, he swears there’s no feelings between the two of you. What _was_ between you two—the inside jokes, the stolen glances, the ghostly touches—was a mere flirtation. Nothing more. 

It couldn’t be more, not when someone else has your attention.

After all, it’s always been Ramsey. You were smitten from day one, from the second you did that emergency thoracotomy with him in the waiting room during your first day at Edenbrook. Obviously, it’s not an ideal situation for Bryce, having you be into someone else while he’s fucking you into oblivion. In fact, it’s entirely infuriating, but he’s not going to admit that.

The most surprising thing of all is that it isn’t like Bryce to feel this way. Bryce is all for feminism and female autonomy. You’re a fully grown woman with wants and needs, a fully grown woman that’s allowed to like and fuck whoever the fuck she wants. No matter how vehemently he disagrees with your choices, he still respects them. Even if your choice is Ramsey. Even if it isn’t him.

But why does that matter anyways? You both agreed beforehand that this was just a one night thing, and you both agreed to this thing sober. No surprises. No feelings. But when all is said and done and you both roll onto your backs and you face him and whisper _you don’t know how badly I needed that,_ Bryce’s heart skips a little too quickly for his liking.

* * *

For a one time fling, Bryce has been seeing you _a lot._

It usually starts like this. You both end a twelve hour shift exhausted. He mentions going to get a quick bite to eat, and you always accept. One thing leads to another, and you’re back in his bed, under his body, in his embrace.

“We can’t keep doing this, Bryce,” you tell him for the nth time. 

“We can’t,” he agrees, but he tucks that promise away, somewhere out of reach, so that one day he can break it.

* * *

He’s found an unlikely ally in Jackie. For someone who claims that she’s always been too busy for relationships, she’s oddly good at giving relationship advice. 

This time, they meet for breakfast at Mel’s, a diner down the street from Edenbrook. A steaming plate of skirt steak with home fries for him and huevos rancheros for her. Jackie, for some god awful reason, likes her coffee black. She thinks the bitterness perks her up, but he thinks that she hit her head at some point in her life, which forced her brain to rearrange her neural pathways into hating creamer. 

“What’s the occasion this time?” Jackie says, sipping her rancid black coffee. “Let me guess. ‘Jackie, she confessed she likes me, she’s no longer head over heels for Ramsey, and she knows that I have an idealized version of her in my head.’”

“Geez, lay off the coffee, Varma,” Bryce answers, wincing. “I know you’re a realist, but throw me a bone here.”

She holds her arms up defensively. “Hey, I’m a ‘don’t talk to me until I’ve had my morning coffee’ type of person. So...” She takes a long sip. “Don’t talk to me until I’ve had my morning coffee.”

“Oh, I know,” Bryce tells her, rolling his eyes. “Anyways, no. While I wish Ramsey was out of the picture, it’s nothing like that.” 

“I don’t think he would be too keen on hearing that,” Jackie teases, taking another sip of her coffee. 

“He isn’t keen on hearing anything if it doesn’t pertain to work,” Bryce snarks, and Jackie gives him one of those wordless agreements. Ramsey, as handsome and successful as he was, just did not care about anything if it didn’t have an accompanying scientific journal. Every time he overhears Ramsey trying to talk to you, it seems that he becomes more robotic with each conversation. It’s always Rookie this or Rookie that, and frankly, Bryce will bust his own kneecaps if he heard the word Rookie one more time, even if it didn’t come from Ramsey’s mouth.

He doesn’t get it. It’s not like he’s the purveyor of all things romance, but he’s morally obligated to admit that he has game. And as someone who has game, he clearly has authority to say that Ramsey has _none._ Zip. Nada. Zero. He can’t believe someone as smart and beautiful and funny as you would put in more effort into someone than you get in return.

(But, then he realizes that his situation is exactly the same. In his case, you’re Ramsey, and he’s the smart and beautiful and funny ingénue unrequitedly in love. Upon this realization, he busts his own kneecaps voluntarily.)

“So? Even if Ramsey’s a workaholic, it doesn’t seem to hinder his dating prospects.” Jackie eyes him, looking extremely smug. All Bryce can do is roll his eyes.

“Clearly.”

As soon as Jackie finishes off her coffee, their waitress comes out from nowhere to refill her cup to the brim. The coffee is all black and steamy and disgusting. She takes another sip, exhaling happily before saying, “What was the purpose of you treating me to breakfast, then?” 

Bryce paying for breakfast was not included in his invite, but there was no way in hell he was going to win this fight if he chose to engage. Defeated, he grumbles, “You are so annoying, Varma.” 

“I’m a doctor, not a therapist,” she says, smiling sweetly. “Let’s call this your co-pay. Now speak as I dig into these huevos.” 

Bryce sighs as he stares into his skirt steak plate. “I don’t know. This is so fucking complicated that I feel like I’m going to pull my hair out.” 

“Not your hair! If you go bald, all the nurses will fall _out_ of love with you,” Jackie retorts sarcastically, stuffing her face with huevos as if her life depended on it. “And we can’t have that!”

“First of all, not true,” Bryce says, almost affronted by the idea that his attractiveness had everything to do with his hair and nothing to do with...well, the rest of him. “Even if I’m bald, I’m a total package. Boston doesn’t see a tall, tanned beachy hunk like this...” He points to himself, basking in his tall, tanned glory. “...every day.”

“Did you really just call yourself a ‘beachy hunk’?” Jackie looks at him with what can only be described as disdain, but Bryce does not care and continues to talk.

“And _second of all,_ if I’m really such a catch that all the hospital staff is in love with me—”

“—I absolutely did not say anything about all the hospital staff being in love with you—”

“—then how come the one person I like doesn’t like me back?”

Jackie shrugs flippantly. “The only person who can answer that is the person who doesn’t like you back.”

Bryce leans into the table, smiling so forcefully that his forehead creases. “Wow, Jack! You’re so smart. I can tell that you were top of your class at Harvard.”

“Don’t call me that,” Jackie says, flipping Bryce off as she stuffs her mouth with wheat bread. “It’s a valid response. Have you done anything to show her that you’re interested in being more than fuck buddies?” 

He winces, again. “Don’t say that so loud. There’s literally a five year old in the booth behind us.”

“But isn't that what you are?” Jackie responds, raising a brow in her Jackie know-it-all way. “Tell me. What else have you been doing to actually facilitate a relationship?”

Bryce didn’t know how to respond, mainly because Jackie was right. What _was_ he doing to show you that he liked you, besides coming around at night and fucking around with you? Your arrangement—whatever the fuck you two are—isn’t giving you the right impression of what he really wants, and that’s entirely his fault. 

But stopping the arrangement is easier said than done. He loves the way you look at night, all bleary-eyed and beautiful, when your dimples and curves are only for _him_ to see. He didn’t have to compete with Ramsey at night, didn’t have to worry that Ramsey will come in and snatch your attention away.

That’s why he wasn’t in a hurry to change the way things were. At night, you were his and he was yours, but he knows that one day things will change. It was an inevitability.

When Jackie notices that Bryce hasn’t said a word in a few minutes, she leans back, arms crossed tightly. “And I rest my case.”

Finally slicing into his skirt steak, Bryce grumbles, “You should’ve gone to Harvard law.”

“If I did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation right now,” Jackie answers, sipping the remainder of her second cup of coffee. “And what’s the fun in that?”

They finish their meals, and Bryce pays for the both of them, as Jackie had wanted. They do their usual exit routine: he tells her that she owes him, she tells him that he’s wrong, and they roll their eyes at each other as they part ways. 

Although his meetings with Jackie usually end well, today seems to be different. He leaves the diner feeling more confused than before. It bothers him so much that he almost cancels on meeting with you later that night.

But alas, his resolve is paper-thin. The second the clock hits nine o’ clock, he still comes over to your apartment and ends up under your sheets. It didn’t matter, at the end of the day. You needed him just as much as he needed you. That much he knew.

* * *

Months pass, and Bryce continues to see you in increasing frequency. In fact, it’s become so frequent that Elijah asks him if he wants a spare key every time he comes around.

With all things considered, Elijah’s been a good sport about it. Bryce can’t count how many times he’s knocked on your front door and Elijah’s opened, looking annoyed at Bryce for interrupting his TV obsession of the month. “Come on, dude,” Elijah says one day, staying at the door long enough for Bryce to enter. “You crash here so much that you should be paying rent.”

“Ignore him,” you cut in, already waiting in front of your room, beckoning him to follow you. “He acts as if his girlfriend doesn’t come over just as much as you do.”

“As a matter of fact, she _does_ pay rent to the same landlord we do, so your point doesn’t stand.” 

“Elijah, hush.” Your eyes flash towards Bryce, a soft smile replacing your scowl. “You ready?”

Bryce follows you like a lost puppy. It’s a bit of a pathetic display because he really does look the part—tail tucked in and everything. Whenever you’re gone and it’s just him and Elijah at the apartment playing 2K, Elijah never fails to clown him for it. All of it is warranted, of course, but he doesn’t quite know how it’s come to this. 

“So are you two dating yet?” Elijah asks as he dunks another shot in. Bryce, hardly paying attention to the game in the first place, misses his shot, prompting an Elijah win. 

“Nah,” Bryce answers him as he starts another match. “We’re just friends.”

“Really?” Elijah sounds surprised, but Bryce can’t see it in his face. “Oh. Cool.”

“You sound surprised.”

“Well, yeah,” Elijah replies nonchalantly. “I don’t know. The way you look at her is definitely not giving me ‘we’re just friends’ vibes. Kinda reminds me of how I look at Phoebe.”

Bryce doesn’t know what to say to that so he just leaves it there and focuses on the 2K match that he will inevitably lose. Not to discredit Elijah’s observation skills, but even he doesn’t believe himself when he says “we’re just friends”. To him, you’re definitely not "just friends". Far from it. But somewhere deep inside of him, he knows that you don’t share the same feelings.

Instead of facing the reality that you don’t like him as much as he likes you, he focuses his attention into the 2K match in front of him. He finally manages a three-pointer, much to Elijah’s dismay. 

* * *

Sometimes, he takes his time with you.

Sometimes, you let him. It’s always like this between the two of you—the familiar push and pull and _push_ and _pull_ —that leaves you gasping and wanting more. He likes to see you writhing, pupils blown out, moans escaping from your lips despite your best efforts to silence yourself with his hand. Maybe it’s some sort of control thing, but it’s more likely that he’s been in this arrangement with you for too long that he can’t see what real love looks like anymore.

Only the moon illuminates the room tonight. The contours of his back are rigid, and you caress him in a way that _almost_ feels like love. “What are you thinking about?” you whisper, snaking arms around his neck, inhaling the cool notes of his scent. 

He wallows in the fact that your touch would feel so much better if there were any feelings in it. The intimacy doesn’t feel real, doesn’t feel right, and hasn’t felt right this entire time, if Bryce were to be completely honest with himself. He’s resentful of the fact that he’s let this go for far too long.

For him, this feels like the end. 

“Nothing,” he answers, before pinning you back down to the bed, and then: “Can I hold you?”

It’s a question he’s never bothered to ask before, but it feels only right to now. When he finds your eyes, he sees that you’re staring right at him, peering questioningly. He wraps his arms around you, and you let him. You let him hold you tight in his arms as if it’s the last time. And unknowingly to you, at some point in the night, as you fall asleep and he watches the rise and fall of your chest, Bryce decides that it is.

* * *

He doesn’t meet you anymore after that night. No more secret rendezvous, no more nightly escapades. After he brushed you off for the tenth time, making up some god awful excuse for why he couldn’t come over, you finally got the hint and stopped inviting him over. Eventually, you two stop talking, your relationship so broken to the point where he actively tries to avoid you at the hospital. 

Last he heard, Ramsey finally asked you out. He’s happy for you, really. At least, as happy as he can be. It’s difficult to be happy for you, especially when he finally figured out that he really did fall for you in the past few months, but he knew from the beginning that Ramsey was the only one in your mind. He should have known that this is how it was going to end. 

It was foolish of him to expect an outcome any different.

**Author's Note:**

> this has been in my drafts since the beginning of the year, and i'm trying to get back into writing so i finally finished this. hope you enjoyed!
> 
> also i've never played 2K in my life. it just seems like something bryce and elijah would play together. bryce just seems like a 2k kind of guy.


End file.
